Murderbot is coming back for a second season
Excellent news for Martha Wells fans: Apple has announced that it's renewed its adaptation of her Murderbot stories for a second season. Word of the renewal comes as the first season reaches its final episode on Friday, July 11th.
Apple announced the series back in November 2023. The first season is based off of the first installment of the series, All Systems Red, which Wells first published in 2017. The series follows an android that calls itself "Murderbot" after it hacked its governor module and goes rogue. Rather than go on a killing spree, it would rather watch trashy science fiction shows and just avoid human interactions altogether. It's brought onto a mission to escort a bunch of scientists on a dangerous planet, and has to protect them when they get in over their heads.
The show debuted back in May, and it's been a real delight to watch: Alexander Skarsgård, who plays the titular character, really nailed Murderbot's mannerisms and attitude, while they've also managed to capture the silliness of the shows that it loves watching. The episodes are also a nice, 30 or so minutes, which makes for a nice change of pace.
In a statement, show creators, Chris and Paul Weitz note that they're "grateful for the response that ‘Murderbot’ has received, and delighted that we’re getting to go back to Martha Wells’ world to work with Alexander, Apple, CBS Studios and the rest of the team."
What I've liked most of all about the series is that it also feels like it understands what makes the books tick: it's about a character enduring a very uncomfortable, neuroatypical existence and learning to interact with the people who surround it. While the show hasn't quite reached the top tier level of projects like Andor, Battlestar Galactica, or The Expanse for me (yet), it's one that's really put a lot of thought into its characters and their interactions, and for that reason alone, I've been hooked.
Apple doesn't say where the series will go for the next season, but it seems likely that it'll tackle the next book in the series, Artificial Condition, which will find Murderbot trying to figure out a bit more about its past, while teaming up with a research vessel called "ART", which stands for "Asshole Research Transport." That alone should make for a great season of television, and if that's the direction they go, I'll be very excited to see who they get to voice the ship.
After that, there's plenty more to tackle: it's followed by Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, and System Collapse. In a recent profile of Wells in The New Yorker, she confirmed that she's recently finished an eighth installment, Platform Decay.